MSRP:

$1,999.00

Overall Rating: 5.78

Take a page from the other manufacturers in this business. Do one thing really well and THEN you can expand to other product rather than trying to do it all and doing it all with an amazing mediocrity.

General Information

BladeZ was sold by DK Fitness to BH Fitness in the summer of 2007, and now units are made by both DK and BH. DK and BH are some of the largest manufacturers of treadmills in the world and make much of the lower-end brands that you find in other parts of the World- other than the United States. They make some cool scooters that you may have seen in stores and have developed a number of different fitness machines. They are marketing under the BladeZ brand and the BH Fitness brand. Since they aren't a primary brand and their main distribution is through a specialty fitness network that is melting on a sidewalk like a popsicle on a hot Florida Summer day, we have doubts about their long-term viability in such a competitive retail market.

Quality / Philosophy

They put decent parts into a good package and they are putting more value in the machine on average when you can get a discount on a unit. None of the designs are too fancy (save for the TV models). We have also been receiving a large number of consumer complaints about mechanical noise problems within a year of putting machines into service, so they may have been cutting corners as of late.

Outlook

We expect BladeZ and BH to get lost in the shuffle in the US market this year. There are simply too many brands being offered and too few specialty dealers and many of those dealers are dying off. Dealers are now choosing lines that they once had to fight over (like Precor and Lifefitness) and unless a brand can bring people in the door, many retailers simply do not want to fool with having to educate the public on a new brand. Blade Z and BH are being very aggressive in marketing to the dealers, but this has a strong potential to come back to bite them and the consumers that end up as the proud owners of a BladeZ or BH machine.